How to Make Money Woodworking From Home

Horse Head Wood Carving

Woodworking is one of the most fulfilling crafts in the world—it requires precision and grit to get a project done. But how do you make money woodworking from home? What if you are just starting out, and you are working alone?

Today, I will discuss with you several methods of how you can earn money with your woodworking projects. Obviously, you have to sell the finished project, so we will not discuss that aspect.

What we will focus on are the methods with which you can find buyers, and how you can make money not only with the physical project but through other means.

Our two main areas of discussion are:

Ways to sell your woodworking projects
Ways to earn money from your woodworking expertise

Let us get started!

Ways to sell your woodworking projects

The most common method by which woodworkers earn money is by getting orders. These orders, or commissions, are guaranteed to make you money because you have a client who is ready to pay. This is the old approach, but the new approach is to be proactive.

It is not unusual for a woodworker to desire a shop. Most woodworkers who saved money build a store in town, hoping to get clients to order. What you may have not realised is that you no longer need to do this.

A shop is costly, and before you know it, the shop is full of furniture that you cannot sell—they age and wither over time, and this results in financial losses.

The better approach is to sell your woodworking projects online. Every time you receive a new commission, take the time to take photos of the finished project and then post the images online. That way, you have an inventory of photos, but you have no inventory of real furniture that sits in your house or garage.

But where do you sell online?

eBay

eBay is still one of the biggest online marketplaces in the world. The thing with eBay is that people expect the item to get delivered so quickly. Woodworking, on the other hand, is an exception. What matters when you sell on eBay is transparency.

In your eBay listings, you can indicate that what they are buying is a hand-made item, not a ready-made one. The buyer must understand that the furniture he is bidding on, which you posted,is yet to be crafted.

Another approach is not to say this at all. What you do is you post your item, but make it clear that the delivery can take weeks. If a buyer makes a purchase, you have an adequate amount of time to build the furniture and ship it to the buyer.

Website

You also have the option to build your own website and maintain it. A website does not cost that much. If you know how to tinker with software, you can pay for a web hosting service for as little as $4.95 per month.

The other option is to use platforms like Shopify. It has everything you need to launch a website, complete with payment processors and shipping calculators. Shopify only costs $29 per month, and you can cancel any time.

Here are the benefits of having a website:

• Flexibility – you can design your site and add as many components as you want. You can add upsell and bundle apps to offer discounts to your customers.

• Less Fees – online marketplaces charge a fee; some can charge as high as 10% of your sale price. Amazon and eBay also charge a lot of fees such as listing fee, closing, fee, and so much more.

• Credibility – if you have your own website, you are establishing yourself as an independent artist and craftsperson. If you sell on Amazon and eBay, people may think that your products are like those that come off a manufacturing mill—not a handcrafted work of art.

• Independence – your website, your rules; selling in online marketplaces means you have to comply with so many rules such as using the right photo sizes, communicating only on the platform, etc.

If you are uncomfortable with building your own website, you can commission somebody who can build it for you.

There are many experts in freelance marketplaces who can build you a website between $49 and $99. After building your site, they will hand it over to you, and then you have to start paying for the monthly subscription, not to the builder, but the software company.

Etsy

Etsy started out as a place for artists and remains so with little changes. Etsy is like Amazon, but sellers can only sell items that they made—handcrafted items that are not mass manufactured by machines. This is the perfect place for artists where they can sell items based on the merit of their work.

Here are the benefits of selling on Etsy:

• Market – there are over 35 million active buyers in the platform; post your goods, and there surely are people who will show interest on what you have to offer

• Built-in analytics with Etsy, you can analyze your impressions, views, click, and other stats that matter to your business. The dashboard also shows the traffic to your Etsy page, order count, revenue, and so much more.

Etsy is great if you do not mind paying $0.20 to list an item. Etsy also takes 5% of your sale. If you use the Etsy payment processor, you will pay another 3% plus $0.25 for every successful sale.

Amazon

Amazon is the second biggest online retail marketplace in the world next to Alibaba. The good thing about Amazon is that it has a fulfilment system, which you can use if you have ready-made woodworking products to sell.

This system is called Fulfillment by Amazon, which online retailers commonly refer to as FBA.

In this system, you ship all your items to Amazon, and Amazon keeps these items in its warehouse. The warehouse location depends on your choice.

Once Amazon receives your products, they will catalogue these products, and you will get notified. Once this process is completed, you can now post your products on Amazon for customers to see.

If a customer orders, you no longer have to ship the item yourself—Amazon is going to get the product from its warehouse and take care of the shipping.

This set-up, of course, has a fee. You have to pay for the storage fee since your products are occupying real estate. You also have to pay transaction fees and listing fees for every successful sale.

The other route is to merely upload your products in Amazon, and then ship the item to your customer once an order is placed. Still, you have to pay your listing fee and sales fee for every successful sale.

Selling your products online works great with or without an inventory. If you can find images online (royalty-fee, of course) of wood crafts, and if you think you can replicate them exactly, then, by all means, post these photos online. Wait for orders to come, and start working on them once the clients have paid.

Ways to earn money from your woodworking expertise

The next category of making money online through woodworking is through being an influencer. As a woodworker, you are an expert, and you have skills that many people are going to pay for.

Since you are working on woodworking projects anyway, you might as well as make money from the process, too, and not just make a profit off of the completed project.

But how?

The four methods I am going to share with you today are YouTube, info products, sponsorship, and affiliate marketing.

YouTube

YouTube is no longer a place where people watch cats jumping away from cucumbers. It is a massive search engine, not for blogs, but for videos. You need to take this opportunity to position yourself as an expert.

Take videos of each project you make, show your audience the step by step process how to make something, and then post it on YouTube. You will be amazed at the sheer number of people who will follow your channel and subscribe to it.

You see, people love to learn. And because they do, you are the one who can fill this gap. If you teach them, they will come.

And if they come, you can monetize your YouTube with ads and in so many ways. The primary monetization is advertising, which you can turn on if your channel has reached a specific number—1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of viewing time.

The key here is to consistently upload new videos so you can build a following. Give people a reason to subscribe to your channel, and money will come later.

Start by producing ten videos and upload them all at once. Then, make sure that you upload a new one every week. You do not have to build massive projects all the time. Simple projects like stools and benches will do.

You can also show tips and tricks, like how to apply wood stain. You can also create tutorials with no need to show woodworking. For example, you can create a video teaching people about the different types of stains, or what they need to do before applying it on wood.

Info Products

An info product is a digitally consumable product. The best example is an eBook. If you can write a book about woodworking and sell it to your followers.

You can sell your eBook on the following channels:

• Your own website

• Google Play Books

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Smashwords

An eBook is a passive income. While you cannot make millions out of it, you can surely make thousands of dollars. If you promote it right, your book can be a major source of your income stream long after you have created the woodwork and sold the furniture to someone.

If you are not comfortable writing a book, why not try selling woodworking plans? There are many people who need guidance on how to build a chicken coop, or how to build a pergola—use this opportunity to serve this market and sell them your woodworking plans.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is great once you have reached a following on YouTube. Companies will come to you and ask you to endorse their product.

Why?

Because your subscribers are targeted markets, naturally, the people who subscribe to your channel are those who are interested in woodworking. And if they are interested in woodworking, will they not be interested in a circular saw?

How about a power drill?

If you have tens of thousands of subscribers, each subscriber is a potential customer for a company that manufactures power tools and woodworking tools. You can charge these companies at least a thousand dollars, and in exchange, you devote a few seconds of your video in endorsing their products.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a process where you endorse a product, but you do not get paid until someone buys. If someone buys, you get a commission.

It all starts with you signing up to an affiliate program, during which you will receive your personal link, called an affiliate link. You need to use that link on your videos or blog posts. If people click on that link, they will be directed to the company’s website.

If they buy, the company can track that the consumer came from your link, and you will get a commission. Companies love this business model—they get free advertising from experts like you.

Of course, you should not promote products you do not believe in. You will not succeed in affiliate marketing by doing a hard sell. What you have to focus on is to provide value. Only then will people trust you and buy what you recommend.

Final Thought

The internet is a godsend to entrepreneurs. You no longer have to build a brick-and-mortar store, which could cost an arm and a leg. If you know how to use the internet, you can build an asset that can generate income for you for many years.

Woodworking does not have to be a one-off project with a one-off income. You can turn a single project into a multi-faceted money-making endeavor—today until the day you decide to stop earning online!

Happy Woodworking

Regards

Ben

Been a Tree Wood